Adult learning is more than alternative education, self-help, self-study, or training. Self-directed inquiry can free you from the cultural traps of today’s postmodern world. When you think for yourself, you take control of your life. Intellectual ability and critical thinking soon become substitutes for paper credentials. Simply stated aggressive learning is the most practical guide to a passionately rewarding life.

Saturday, September 16, 2017

The Pious War on Science and Reason

ThatDonald
Trump’s secretary of education, Betsy DeVos, wants Christianity to play a
bigger part in the education of America’s children is appallinglyunacceptable. Trump’s appointment of
Jerry Falwell Jr. to lead an educational task force is equally unacceptable,as is the Supreme Court’s loosening of
the separation of church and state. For me, these issues are the straws that
break the camel’s back. An anti-science, anti-intellectual educational agenda in
the 21st century is untenable. The Trump Administration is using
organized religion solely for the purposes of regimentation in the creation of
a backward, authoritarian, patriarchal culture that’s rich with contempt and
animosity for those they assume don’t belong.

I’m now in my eighth decade on the planet. I grew up
in Oklahoma and Texas in the 1940s and 50s, in a family that professed a belief
in God but did not attend church. In my youth, I was a religious child, but at
some point, in my early twenties, I was hit with a lightning bolt of
skepticism. Since then, I have been listening to arrogant people declare that
if we don’t align the endorphins in our gray matter with theirs, we will burn
forever in Hell. These days, in a country with holidays, laws, tax exemptions,
and other practices of publicly declaring
that supernatural beliefs are to be respected, we hear a constant chorus of
complaints that such beliefs are under siege. I say, it’s about damned time.

We celebrate the human brain as the most complex
entity in the known universe. Human consciousness is staggeringly complex, and
yet there are people who declare that if you go along with their views and if
you believe what they believe, you won’t need your brain in order to live
forever; you will retain your consciousness and you will experience blissful
joy for eternity.

Any belief system that promises that dead people—people
without functioningbrains—will live
eternally and that they will continue to survive in a glorious mental state
simply because they believe something someone said about an event that they
didn’t witness—an event that flies in the face of physics and elementary
science, an event so preposterous that sanity must be put aside to even
consider such violations of physical possibility—is
a system that is a threat to global civilization.

The credulity required to accept these beliefs defies
rationality. If such radically absurd views were not taught to children before
they learned to think for themselves, they would not long survive, as is
increasingly evident in Europe. Moreover,
these outlandish notions pose an existential danger to mankind because they
come with a surplus of defensive contempt for nonbelievers.

True believers are always on alert for those who raise
doubts about their doctrines, and they are understandably wary of science and
secularism. The devastating but largely ignored reality is that believing such
impossible nonsense leads to magical thinking and a license to believe any
damned thing, no matter how absurd the premise.

People who identify as religious fundamentalists are
very often so fully invested in their beliefs that they perceive opposition of
any kind as a mortal threat. Job-killing automation, social change,
accelerating uncertainty, gay marriage, other worldly religions—these looming
issues threaten constricted worldviews. They cause believers to double down on
their fantastical belief in the promiseof
immortality by stressing a need for conformity and obedience.

The crux of the angst of true believers is deeply
ensconced in the probability that if the world at large assumes they are wrong
about traditional issues as basic as gender identity, gay marriage, and wedding
cake politics, then they could also be wrong about bigger issues and quite
possibly everything. It is not by accident that anti-LGBT laws are being
enacted in states where significant numbers of religious fundamentalists reside.
As millennials fight racism and bigotry via social media in southern states, especially
concerning LGBT rights, the chorus of fearful response is getting louder.

A religion promising an afterlife is a psychological shield
against the fear of death. It’s an existential dressing for the wound of
nonexistence. Supernatural beliefs may have positive benefits for some, but the
costs are enormous. Millions upon millions of people have been butchered
because of religious conflict over the true nature of reality and which fantastical
beliefs have credence.

At the geographical borders that separate divergent
religious communities, the friction we see erupting threatens to favor one
religious view over another. The resulting animosity can fester and smolder
into a strain of hatred which, if it remains unchecked, can lead to genocide.

The world is treading dangerously close to a major
religious confrontation between the West and East, Christian vs. Muslim. Many radical
leaders from both religions are eager to engage in an all-out conflict because
it will add great meaning to their lives. Christian conservatives increasingly
call for political leaders to use the word Islamic
when describing terrorists. This is precisely what the terrorists want to
happen because it brings them closer to the possibility of Jihad and martyrdom.

Worship is amped-up delusion, and for the sake of
humanity, it needs to be replaced, where possible, with thoughtfulness. Doubt
can be frightening, but the price of willful illusion is high, too high. Take
any mainstream religious text and substitute the word illusionfor the word faith.
By doing this, you will be taking a giant leap toward a more objective sense of
reality while dissipating oceanic waves of angst and contempt.

Cosmologist Carl Sagan argued that “extraordinary
claims require extraordinary evidence.” There is not a shred of evidence that
there is life after death or consciousness without a brain. None, zero, zip,
nada. Death is simply nonexistence, and if you think it through, we’ve all been
dead before. The first 14-plus billion years went by fast, so to speak. If you
want to emulate those religious aspirations that call for brotherly love,
compassion, and looking out for those among us least able to care for
themselves, I’m all in. But if you expect me to subscribe to supernatural
magical thinking, leave me out.

While I remain an advocate for religious liberty and
religious tolerance, despite my wariness of organized religion, the separation
of church and state requires an unmovable wall. If your religion gives you
comfort, good for you. But when people use their religion to engage in bigotry,
racism, and ethnocentric hatred, it’s time to speak up and denounce such
rhetoric as having no place in a civilized society. If we violate the Founders’
principles of the separation of church and state, we do so at our peril. As
Voltaire said, “Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit
atrocities.” Let’s not let them.

Everything about this speaks to me. As a 42 year old skeptic in the Bible Belt of Kentucky, THANK YOU. I am convinced though it is exactly your type of thinking that will help our Nation survive many generations into the future. First and foremost - empathy and compassion, and second, almost equally important, an evidence based, fact based approach to living. Magic fairy tales need not apply.

Fundamentalism of any ilk is our biggest problem. In the USA Christian Dominionism tends to be our biggest political issue. (Pence subscribes to this as do many Evangelicals) Wanting their dogma to replace our democracy.

Education; real, fact based, non-white washed education is the key to stopping them in their tracks. The other half would be to defund them by revoking their tax-exempt status and forcing them to follow the guidelines set for every other charity.

No one wants to outlaw any religion but we do want to de-fang the dangerous fractions within those religions. The extremists, the fundamentalists, the terrorists. For the sake of the future of humanity, they need to be cut off at the knees.

you don't know what good reasons are you can;t distinguish between what you want and waht's true,of course if the admin takes down my evidence there's no way I can win.,real convenient for you.Come on my blog I;ll take down your evidence,

first get over the fallacy of proof.science is not about proof, go read Carl Popper, science is about disproving bad hypotheses. that is why string theorists stick with a theory for which there is no proof. In place of proof we hane warant.